Words
by HoshisamaValmor
Summary: Words cause the deepest wounds. See warnings inside


Author's Note: This was originally a flashback scene on a much longer fic I've now discarded for a number of reasons. (This would take place after my 'The Talk' fic, and in between chapter 3 of 'Loss', but while those two have a much lighter tone to Kenny and Levi's interaction, this one definitely does not.)  
Edited the edges of this to a bunch of plays of Cradle of Filth's 'Heartbreak And Seance' I just found and something in it resonated to me and this story. The lyrics are a bit unknown at the moment, so it's definitely the melody for me.'

 **Warnings:** language, semi graphic description of violence, harassment and harm to a child. I'm torn if it requires M rating?

Disclaimer: Don't own Shingeki no Kyojin.

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Kenny never intervened.

When Levi got involved in fights, he would watch or ignore. Sometimes he yelled at Levi for failing, others he insisted in Levi improving, but let him get beaten to a pulp if needed be. He didn't intervene.

Kenny's instability became expectable to Levi. The obsession for Levi to master survival skills, the disregard for basic human needs. The persistence for Levi to be independent, the pressure for Levi to socialize. His clumsy demonstrations of care, his sudden outbursts of violence.

A constant inconsistency.

When it came to personal relationships, it hindered Levi that Kenny cheered and goaded girls into flirting with him, regardless the fact he was nine the first it happened. Kenny didn't care it. He probably thought it funny. To him, Levi's embarrassment was just silly young shame. He didn't intervene when Levi had had to physically push older girls into not touch him under his shirt or kiss him. Kenny laughed at his 'panic' for days, and was often a subject he picked up when he was drunk.

Independence, learn to make it out alone, to survive and win.

Then this happened.

The man in the pigpen pub Kenny found approached Levi disinterestedly. Levi was perfectly calm when he saw the man's actual intent. He was even silently proud of himself for learning to control himself, keep his emotions in check to be ruthless like Kenny. A silent, cold and low sense of anger ruled him while he watched the man attempt to intoxicate him, not so subtly persuading the interest in 'a game of grown ups'. He knew the owner of the pub, the man said, and had better drinks on a quieter side room. They'd do a drinking competition, had Levi every heard of it?, the man continued. The touch on his back burned him through the fabric, the hand sliding to his neck and turning the burning unbearable, and yet Levi forced himself to remain calm. Focused. Either grown impatient or misinterpreting Levi's calm, the man gropped his hair.

Levi had already spinned the knife under the man's chin before the pull actually happened, and yet he barely had time to scratch skin.

The man had flown backwards, crashing to the floor with a loud bang, bench clashing and bellows erupting so suddenly if caught the pub clients', more than used to fights, off guard. Heads turned and bodies dispelled swiftly out of the way to let the beating to unfold, yells turned to groans into moans as the man's face got crushed into a bundle of broken bones, missing teeth and sunken eye. Kenny relentlessly, menacingly, kicking and trampling skin, flesh and bone under his feet, nothing apparently enough to soothe him. Two men had to tackle him off the puddle of blood on the floor, shouts of a different nature exploding and echoing now.

The hem of Kenny's white coat was drenched in blood, splattered and dripping, his face a mask of chilling tranquility that quickly drove the men that tackled him away, correctly fearing they'd follow. Barely anyone registered the skinny brat witnessing the scene, holding a sharp knife in slowly numbed fingers.

The surprisingly spontaneous intervention nailed Levi to the floor, watching everything unfold as if it was happening too fast for him to do something and too slow to be real. The man bled like a pig on the floor under Levi's mere stare. The form quivered horribly, coughing dark oozed blood. Levi's eyes eventually lifted up to Kenny, following the blood from the floor to his coat to the glacial calm expression on his face. Kenny didn't look at anyone for an infinite second, that mask slowly, very slowly starting to dawn into Levi's stunned brain, and then Kenny seemed to change back into his normal self, poisonous grin and deafened words shouted.

Until the surprise vanished. Levi's face darkened, and it was like his expression had fallen, a weight carving hatred deep and dark into him. Even Levi himself was aware of the change in his expression, and the reawaken strength on his fingers squeezing the handle of the knife.

The intervention didn't bring relief or gratitude.

He never intervened before.

He hadn't intervened _then_.

It had to be Levi to address it. Kenny left the pub shortly after the ordeal, dragging Levi by the arm for mere centimeters before Levi snapped himself free. Kenny didn't argue and continued. The man's step betrayed that pretensed calm.

Some streets away, Levi brust.

"Kenny."

The man grunted something in return, not halting in the slightest.

"Stop."

"Huh? What the fuck do ya want?"

Kenny knew exactly what the next minutes of conversation would be about. Levi could see past the annoyance in his tone, like that previous white mask, to the discomfort he was hiding. He was uncomfortable.

It hindered him? Really? _Now_ it hindered him, that a man could attempt to hurt him?

Levi's rush of anger returned and his eyes darkened. Kenny seemed more annoyed with it.

"Huh?! Ya wanna say something?"

"If it bothers you so much, maybe you should have done something about it."

"Didn't I, ya fucking ungrateful brat?" Kenny stepped forward, and then halted. His teeth were gritted. "How many times did I told you to be careful, to be watchful? You must've thought ya could handle that guy."

"Of course I could, you just didn't give me a chance to kill him."

"Ya know what could've happened if I hadn't kicked that disgusting ass of his? Huh, ya little stupid kid, I don't have time to be looking after ya, ya know what he would have done to you?"

"Yeah, I know."

The discomfort bled through. Kenny snapped his head to the side, like he was slapping himself, to shake it off his face. Levi's fists shut in painful grips.

"Ya... yeah, whatever, just piss off, brat."

"I know what he was gonna do to me, Kenny. Don't walk out on me when I'm talking to you. Don't you walk away when I'm talking to you!"

Levi caught Kenny by the arm, pulling him roughly, forcing him to stop. Kenny pulled the arm away with a snarl, his expression now bordering anger too as Levi spinned ahead of him and stood there, iced glare warning him.

"Ya get that fucking stare off ya face, ya know I can't fucking stand it."

"If you knew my mother well enough-"

"Uh? Why the fuck are-"

"-to be the only person who walked into our room after she was gone, why the-"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, don't go there. It had nothing to do with that. Ya-"

"Why the fuck didn't you do something about it? Why didn't you help her? Did you expect me to help her?"

"Of course not, you stupid ass, ya were a damn puny runt, what-"

"Then you should have done something."

"Why the fuck are ya so fucking annoying? Get out of my way."

"Why didn't you do something?"

"Maybe I didn't care, ya thought that?"

"And you care now? _Now_ you care?That's why we're here now?"

The last time Kenny had physically shake him had been years prior. The sudden movement startled Levi like it had done then, like an imprint he couldn't overlap and let go, the aggressiveness of the act of a much taller man towering fast over him. The instant of panic froze him, before the concrete aim of the movement struck him and grounded him to the moment as Kenny groped his arm and threw him to the side with too much force.

His heart pumping blood again harder, the imprint burning with the dull ache on his skin, ridiculously vivid, realistically painful.

"Is that why you're putting up with me, to make up for my mother? That doesn't do it, you fuck!"

Kenny ignored him. Levi knew he should expect a breaking point soon, and the unpredictableness of the outcome didn't bother him. Not now, when his mind was set on this one cause, this one pain.

"It doesn't do it. You aren't making up for it, she's _dead_! You shouldn't have helped me, you should have helped _her_! No one helped her when those men hurt her. _You_ hurt her. You didn't care. You're too late now, you son of a bitch. You think this shows your regret?"

"Argh, for fuck's sake, you think I don't regret doing nothing about it?" Kenny spinned on his heels, and again the jolt of panic ran through Levi when he bent suddenly to him, clasping and bruising his arms with two locked fists.

"Let me go!" Kenny shook him so violently Levi clashed against the man's belly. The fear turned to rage, teeth clenched shut as he yet again kept failing to beat Kenny's grip.

" _I do._ I fucking regret it. And if ya think I'm lying, think about how _ya're_ only here because I didn't do anything about it. Huh?! That puts things into fucking perspective and sure as hell makes me fucking regret it. Ya wouldn't even fucking exist and we'd both be well better."

It struck him harder than a slap or a punch.

Kenny didn't bother to waste another second. He threw Levi to the ground and turned back to his course, leaving the child too stunned to chase after him.

Levi laid there longer than he cared to note, numbed, not enough to mitigate the pulsating pain his bruised arms.

Levi didn't talk to Kenny for weeks. It all happened some months before his eleventh birthday.

He followed the man for a couple of days out of simple spite, and then refused to do so. Kenny didn't care. Another couple of days later, Levi returned, as if he hadn't been on his own at all. The time together became forced, hostile, any new technique or demand from Kenny in form of a short sharp hiss.

When he did admit the thought of addressing Kenny again, a week before his birthday, it regained a certain familiarity, almost like it could be like before, as dysfunctional as it was. But it felt cold and broken. Maybe in time, with effort or with natural interaction, things could slowly start to be like they were.

Not long after that, Kenny was gone.

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the end

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 **Author's Note:** Like in another fic of mine, I write Levi has having an unconscious traumatic trigger to a scene I once wrote involving Kuchel's pimp in 'The Window to the Sky'.

I'm in a process of mental cleansing and so all the stories will have weaker writing and simple plots, but I prefer that to continue like I have until now.

I have a lot of young Levi fics, all independent but form a continuity. Seriously. I'll make a masterpost eventually for new readers to get their bearings.

Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.


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